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Yup, agree 100%, plus with all the new LED's coming out being more and more powerful, the power saving aspect of running LED's is slowly becoming less of a draw card, and the cost, some people are paying upwards of 30k for LED lighting. That would buy me T5 globes, MH's and enough electricity for the next 10 years probably. But like you say, so many overseas tanks for many years have been showcasing stunning colours in their SPS under T5's, hell, some of their frag tanks even put display tanks to shame, lol. The thing with T5 is you seem to get more overall coverage within the tank, less shadows, plus the great variety of different coloured tubes. I'm still a fan of MH and T5.

The rate at which led technology seems to change, it still appears to be an expensive fad. If they were as good as advertised the. Why must every unit have different chips, colours, etc.
I still prefer t5.
As Leslie said, can't only focus on light, water quality is prob still more important.

I'm personally also leaning towards T5's as appose LEDS. 1. the price of fancy LED units are still to crazy, and secondly, has anybody ever noticed how high up the led units are hanged and then still run at like 50% to prevent bleaching and light shock.

Strange how much more we understand about corals as we go along.
First generation LEDS, with the 1W LEDS, we soon realized that they are to weak for deeper tanks and SPS.
The second generation we got the 3W LEDS. So the theretical issue with tank depth should be solved. But still we are not happy with growth
Then we realized we need more colour. And the third generation LED fittings came out, with multiple colours in arrays more colourful than a Christmas tree.

But still, it is as if something is missing. Soon the forth generation LED fittings with 10W or more leds will be the "standard"

I have a 900mm Cree LED Unit...i personally see amazing results in my 1.2 DT..i previously had the 6x T5's going..and yes it was good but not with the same results in comparison. I agree geting the height right with the LED's is tricky but with the lastest generation of LED's on the market it comes with adjustable setting to emit low med or high light tensity.

I am setting up another 1.5m tank using my 6X T5..i will show progress on growth ...once it has cycled

I was running leds over my SPS tank for a while, really did not get the colour and growth out the corals that I was expecting....changed out to LED/T5 combo....and I am lovng it. Growth and Color is insane! I love T5.... (LED section is really only there for night time viewing)

To be honest, I was sold on LEDs. Still love LEDS and once they are up and running , you can forget about them for a long time,without losing performance. They can be tweaked to create lightning,sunrise, sunset, whatever. But is this really beneficial to your livestock. So over the last 3 weeks I have been running T5 lighting while building my DIY led unit consisting 100 x 3w leds. Plan was to add 20 X 3w at a time and then removing the T5's but Im getting such nice colour and growth from the T5's that I have decided to keep the T5's and run a T5 and led combo. I also have less shadow in the tank with this combo. T5's definitely have better spread.

Ill take a pic of a coral under T5's , a pic under T5's and LED combo and then a pic under LEDs to compare when I get home tonight.

IMO ..... Its nt just light for sps ... I found that there are guys running diy-high end led only units and making great success ... Then there are the guys running same unit and can't get colour,growth and health...

If you take 1 step further and checkout the 'husbandry' ... U will also come to the conclusion the before sps is affected by light,it needs to be healthy and happy,then it reacts to the light source...

I hope what I'm saying makes sense coz its from my own personal experience on other tanks

So bottom line is .... You can go buy the most expensive light unit, or the cheapest Diy .... Dnt think the lights are going to make the tank,there are many guys out there complaining about certain units, and then there are other guys using those certain units and making a killing(not literally) lol .....take this into account

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want" i mean "Doesn't it all boil down to keeping water as a pet?"so"Come over and I'll show you my barebottom!" while "I glue some animals to rocks"